


But I Bumble

by joannabelle



Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen, but hey that's his specialty and if you're good at something, idefk and neither does sauron, sauron needs to learn to stop pissing off the wrong people, strange encounters of the yellow booted kind
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-02
Updated: 2016-01-02
Packaged: 2018-05-11 04:23:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5613811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joannabelle/pseuds/joannabelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While serving under Melkor in the First Age, Sauron has a strange encounter in the trees.</p>
            </blockquote>





	But I Bumble

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters of The Silmarillion or Lord of the Rings, here simply I borrow them for the pleasure of it.
> 
> Rating: T
> 
> Warnings: Bah! None, for the first time!
> 
> Notes: For those not aware, Sauron’s original name is Mairon, and being that this fic is set in FA, it seems that both of us are confused as to which one is better to use – so please, have both.

* * *

  
It was, perhaps, by chance that upon the eve of FA468, during a long journey back to Angband after the bi-annual supplies quest, Sauron happened across the strangest of acquaintances hidden in an old forest bordering the eastern plains.  
  
The trees were dark and shrouded in the thick new Arda light, and he had indeed chosen this lone route back to Angband by foot to avoid both the light of the sun and to delay the inevitable wrath that lay before him at his return to the Angband stronghold. His Lord Melkor was in no fine mood these days: becoming evermore desolate and reclusive by the week, as the burns from the remaining two Silmarils both declined his health and increased the rot of his hands. As such Sauron often found many an excuse upon excursion to take the long way home, if but only to buy himself a few weeks solace from the burden of being Lord Melkor’s favoured – and thus, beleaguered – source of relief.  
  
As it was, on this particular day, just before noon when Arien made her finest appearance in the sky (much to Sauron’s dismay), the Maia had rounded a corner of the wood to find himself facing a very odd sight indeed.  
  
Hunched over a small, trickling stream he saw the figure of a short old man. The squat creature, who for all intents and purposes appeared to be washing himself in the water, had his hands cupped and was pulling them up to his hair – the long beard at his front already dripping wet. What was curious, however, was not this action – Sauron had indeed seen Men bathe in worse – but the man’s odd assortment of clothes. Upon his back ran a coat that slagged all the way down to his ankles, in a deep moss green. Not that strange, Sauron supposed. Yet upon the man’s feet he spotted the most outrageous thing – boots the very colour and tone of the sunshine!  
  
Pausing for a few seconds, he regarded the man with growing disdain.  
  
“You know, there are basins for that.” Sauron remarked, tilting up his nose in a shrivel from where he stood in judgement at the edge of the clearing. “Do your people not know of these inventions still?”  
  
He waited for a moment; though the man seemed posed not to retort; as he had not so much as turned around at the sound of Sauron’s voice.  
  
“And what is it with your kind that you do not turn to acknowledge one of the blessed Ainur?” Sauron continued, already becoming irate at the fellow. What cheek! Some small mouse of a beggar in rags, who has the gall to not even turn his head – and for the distinguished Lieutenant of Melkor, at that! Unpopular or not, he had a reputation to uphold.  
  
In a few tall strides, Sauron crossed the clearing to get closer to the creature, who had again stooped to brush more water over his skin and was now bringing a handful, cupped, to his lips.  
  
Sauron could not determine his height, though he did again make note of the beggar’s boots, which were crouched in a crumple against the grass at the water’s edge. The soles, Sauron noted, seemed too clean to be in regular contact with the dirt, so he concluded the man must have a home nearby.  
  
“Where are you from?” He demanded regardless, stepping closer until his form eclipsed the man’s in a long, tall shadow and finally forced a pause. “And what is your name?”  
  
At last, the man raised his head as though in a startle. Sauron snorted, ostentatiously refusing to step back to give the old man the room he needed to stumble to a stand. Yet despite the overt lack of eye contact, Sauron got the strangest impression that he was being sized up.  
  
“Well?!” He prompted, angry at having to ask for a third time to elicit any response.  
  
The man turned and Sauron looked down at him with a sneer, tapping at the sword hilt on his hip in a silent signal to the creature that he ought show some respect. Stupid boots or not.  
  
“My name!” The man smiled, looking up at him in cheer as though he had only just noticed Sauron was there. “Why, that is a question. That is certainly a question I would like to know! My name.”  
  
At first, Sauron did not know how to react. While the words were circling, he did not get the feeling the man was being rude – and yet, here he was, staring up at Sauron with a smile as clear as daisies and refusing to answer a single one of his questions.  
  
“I will not repeat myself again.” Sauron ground, stepping back a fraction without realising it.  
  
“Repeat?” The man replied, still smiling. “Repetition is for the merry! I am Tom, of the forest. Tom Bombadil. You are standing in my wood.”  
  
“Yours?” Sauron scoffed, looking around in disbelief. “I should think not. You are a simple beggar, I can tell from your clothes. Now, do not tell lies small creature, for I see through all disguises and you make no fool of me.”  
  
“I need make nothing of anything.” The beggar responded in cheer. “All is what it is, and all it was, and all it will be. I am the Master of these woods.”  
  
“Really.” Sauron said, very doubtful. “Then where is your home? I see nothing here but the stream. Looks to me like you have crawled your way in from the mountains. A dwarf, perhaps? You have a beard to match.”  
  
But Tom – whether intentional or no – seemed not to hear him, as he continued on with a hum and started to pace around Mairon until he had cleared the Maia’s imposing form and was free to skip across the clearing.  
  
Sauron watched him with increasing displeasure, already making the round decision he disliked the man severely.  
  
The beggar was lucky, it seemed, that Sauron was in rather that of a relaxed mood, or there would have been far more trouble. As it were, Sauron was curious. What was a man of this stature and in those boots doing alone in the woods, with naught on him and appearing to have no home nor destination nearby? It was – unusual. To say the least.  
  
Cautious of tricks, he followed the man through the clearing, until they returned back to an uncovered path where the man stopped ahead of him and Sauron – with little better to do – reclined back against a tree, impatient and staring at him with a glare.  
  
“Well?” He groused, annoyed – both at the man for not answering, and at himself for being so intrigued he felt the need to chase it up.  
  
“Well, that is the question!” The man – Tom – repeated, for about the billionth time, and Sauron’s jaw clenched in frustration as he started picturing all the ways he might flay the creature, just for the principle of it.  
  
He was just preparing to make a move when the man – as though waiting on some unknown queue – continued in what Sauron could not describe in any other way as than by through a song:  
  
“I am neither here nor there, nor there nor here, nor anywhere, really.”  
  
The tune was odd – off-beat – and spoke of something like the whisper in the leaves – some fey thing that struck the hairs on Mairon’s arms on end, and ran a shiver up his spine.  
  
It sounded like a spell – but that was preposterous.  
  
The Maia shifted against the tree trunk, his eyes following the movement of the strange little man with fresh perplexity. He ignored the feeling that was now tingling through his arms, and refused to give in to the desire to physically shake it off, knowing the man would see.  
  
“But you are, what?” He inquired, getting frustrated. “Just a man? Or perhaps a Hobbit; you look like one too, short dirty legs and no manners.”  
  
“Pah! Hobbit I am not,” Tom sung back: “Man I am not; nor elf, nor dwarf, nor goblin, I trust. I am simply Tom of the forest, little Maia, and do not forget.” He turned back around in Sauron’s direction as for a second Mairon saw straight into the man’s eyes: crystal-blue and brighter still than gems.  
  
“ _Little_ Maia?” Sauron shifted, flipping some straying strands of hair out of his face. He sent the stranger another sneer, his arms crossing over his chest, though for some reason he seemed to lack the energy to retaliate where usually he would have cleaved the man’s head straight in two for the comment. Instead, he found himself settling for a quip: “Such cheek is unwise, coming from one of your stature!”  
  
“You think you the only one with magic?” Tom smiled, his facing becoming all the more irritating the longer Mairon stared at it, as the light in the smaller man’s eyes refused to dim, even as he shook his head, pacing in a meandered circle around Mairon’s tree: “No, no. It is not so.”  
  
Mairon was getting a very strange feeling again. There it was, as Tom rounded the left of the tree: of something familiar, something known, that lay _just_ out his grasp.  
  
“I have met you before.” He realised with a tilt of his head, peering down at the pacing man as his eyes narrowed now in sure suspicion.  
  
And it was at that moment that Tom came to lock eyes with him again for the briefest, stillest second frozen in front of Mairon and the tree – before his eyes slid on, and his steps re-took.  
  
“Perhaps, perhaps.” The man hummed, disappearing again out of sight. “Perhaps we are yet still to meet.”  
  
“Still yet to meet? You speak in tongues!”  
  
“That tree you are sitting on belongs to my Lady Goldberry,” Tom announced in a sudden switch of topics. “she spent many years here growing it from the seed.”  
  
Sauron glanced down at himself – arms crossed and one ankle slung across the other, and the rough brown of the trunk tucked behind his calves. “And so?” He bit back, after a moment’s pause. “Besides, I lean upon it, I do not sit. And what do I care who watered the thing? In my lands it would have been felled with the rest of them, and by now be laying in a smoking pit, shrivelled and on fire! My Master cares not for greenery; it is a fickle thing.”  
  
This, at last, seemed to gain him some reaction.  
  
“Your Master does not understand the purpose.” Tom said simply, his expression mild – and if Sauron was not wrong, he would almost think himself being mocked.  
  
“The _purpose_?” He repeated, anger coiling like a whip. “What of purpose does know a dirty old beggar in the woods! My Master understands all, sees all, feels all, gave life to all. I will hear no more of this talk, and if you do not get out of my way I will remove your head: as I could be so kind!”  
  
Furious, Sauron pushed himself up off the tree trunk, reaching down for the sword he kept fastened against his hip, quite ready to take a swipe at the foul creature and rid himself of the hassle for good.  
  
A voice floated to him as he bent to unsheathe the weapon, from somewhere in the distance:  
  
“As you wish.” Tom’s reply had no emotion in it, which only served to irritate Sauron further.  
  
Hissing, Sauron pulled the sword out in one broad swish, a little (if he must admit) rusty due to the length of time it had been since he had served on the front line of, well, anywhere.  
  
But when he looked back up, hilt at the ready, Tom had disappeared.  
  
“Coward!” Sauron spat, looking around in anger. “You think to hide from me? It will do you no good!”  
  
And rounding the tree behind him, Sauron made to seize the creature by scruff, sure as he was that Tom had ducked behind it in the mere moments he’d had to spare.  
  
His hair met thin air, and Sauron swore in frustration. Yet there was no trick to it: the clearing was empty. Not even the grass was stirred from a hasty depart.  
  
It was, really, like Bombadil has vanished thin into the air.  
  
“Nonsense.” Sauron growled to himself, shaking his head. “Must be a hobbit after all! But no mind, I have neither the time nor the desire to stoop around chasing hobbits – and simply for your cheek:”  
  
In a slice and three muttered words of sorcery, Sauron sent a spell of rot right to the roots of the trunk in front of him, the tree crying out with a creak of lament as it split open through the middle.  
  
Serves it right.  
  
And then in one obscene, almost troll-like hunch Sauron sent a pair of scaled black wings bursting forth from his own back, as his face bent and lost its fairness to elongate into the fanged snout of a dirty, hairy great bat.  
  
With a gust of soundless breath, he took into the air – deciding, this time, to forgo the formalities of travelling by foot, lest he run into any more of the foul creatures that crawled Arda’s fields. He would fly his way back to Angband after all; it was now decided.  
  
Eru, at the very least he would have a fey new story to recount to his Master upon his return. Maybe it would even distract him from that whole ... Huan business.  
  
Or maybe not.

 


End file.
